#Comiket Confirms 2 Staff Members Came Down With COVID-19 After Event

Comiket 99 at Tokyo Big Sight (photo: Daryl Harding)

On January 6, the Comic Market Preparatory Committee announced on Comiket’s website that two staff members had come down with COVID-19 after working at the world’s biggest anime event the week prior. One other staff member who shared a hotel room with the duo is currently awaiting results of their PCR test, though haven’t shown any COVID-related symptoms after the event.

The blog post explains that the pair had worked at Comiket on December 30, the first day of the event, and then on January 2 and 3 had come down with symptoms of COVID. The duo then took a PCR test on January 4 and the next day it was confirmed that the two of them had COVID-19. According to authorities, they were only infectious from December 31, the day after they worked at Comiket. The two shared a hotel room with another during the event. It is not known if it was the Omicron variant or a previous strain of the virus.

Comiket has also noted that there have been no other reports of the spread of COVID-19 at the event, despite having 55,000 people through the doors each day. To get into the event, one must have shown either a vaccination certificate of two doses, a negative PCR test from at most 36 hours beforehand, or undertake a rapid antigen test on site–though it wasn’t guaranteed a negative result would let you into the event. Staff and attendees went through the same checks.

The Comic Market Preparatory Committee is currently investigating the contacts between the two staffers and others but has confirmed that the two had no close contact with attendees during their shifts on the first day of the event.

Source: Comiket

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Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.